Enfoques de aprendizaje y dominancias cerebrales entre estudiantes universitarios

Abstract

The fact that very few investigations have treated to study the possible relationship between approaches to learning and learning styles and, furthermore, the fact that practically neither of them has been proposed to study the relationship that there would be between approaches to learning and brain dominances was what motivated the accomplishment of the present study in a university context. The aim of this study was the identification of approaches to learning and cerebral dominances in predegree students at Austral University of Chile and to prove their incidence in academic performance. The Questionnaire on Approaches to Learning and Studying of Entwistle (1993) and the Human Information Processing Survey of Torrance, Taggart and Taggart (1984) were administered to a sample of 209 students. Results: The most adopted approach among students is the strategic one, followed by the deep and finally the surface approach. Among the study areas certain tendency was detected to the preferential adoption of one approach over the others. Even though meaningful relationship between factors and performance were not detected, the students adopting strategic-deep approach got better performances than those who adopted other approaches. The cerebral dominance that is manifested with highest frequency between them is that of mixed brain. Association between dominances and performance and between learning approach and dominance was not detected.